New voters urged to enrol now

26/8/01
Thousands of Western Australians will be denied a vote at the next Federal election if the Federal Government goes ahead with plans to sneak in discriminatory changes to enrolment procedures, according to Electoral Affairs Minister Jim McGinty.
"There is no doubt the timing of the move, just before an election, is intended to gain maximum political advantage from the confusion," Mr McGinty said.
"Our research suggests the people most likely to be disenfranchised are young people, Aboriginal people and those on low incomes."
The changes will force people enrolling for the first time to provide specified identity documents and have them witnessed by people from a specified class of witnesses. Enrolment transfers will also be affected by the new witnessing requirements.
Currently, any person who is already enrolled can witness an enrolment.
Mr McGinty said the changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act went through Parliament in 1999 but the laws were never proclaimed.
"Now, a short time before the election, they are suddenly rushing to implement them," he said.
"I'm advised the regulations could be tabled as early as next week and come into effect in early October, just weeks before the election is expected to be called."
Mr McGinty said anyone not presently on the electoral roll should safeguard their constitutional right to vote by enrolling now before the new rules come into force.
"The Howard Government should not be allowed to get away with this crass attempt to manipulate enrolments," he said.
"As well as causing inconvenience to all electors and deterring already difficult to enrol groups, the changes so close to an election will minimise the time available to chase up missing or incomplete information before the rolls close. This will result in many people being denied a vote, even though they have tried to enrol."
Mr McGinty said that in the week before the rolls closed after the last Federal election was called in 1998, there were almost 70,000 new enrolments (mostly 18 and 19-year-olds) and over 280,000 transfers of enrolment nationally.
"In Western Australia, over 40,000 people enrolled or transferred enrolments during that one week," he said.
"These figures show that the impact of changing the system at the last minute is potentially enormous, and there is no valid reason for doing it.
"Claims that the new procedures will improve security are rubbish, as the Australian Electoral Commission has no way of checking a witness actually falls into the required class of witnesses or whether the witness actually sighted the applicant's ID, or if in fact the ID was genuine.
"If John Howard was serious about this issue, he would initiate greater cross-checking of enrolments and higher fines for false enrolments or false witnessing in order to deter fraud, yet these suggestions have been ignored."
Mr McGinty said the majority of States were opposed to the changes because of the discriminatory impact they would have.
"It is now at a point where the situation threatens to destroy the joint enrolment procedure that currently enable potential electors to fill in a single card to enrol for local, State and Federal elections," he said.
Media contact: Amanda O'Brien on 9220 5000